Is there any chance in the future one might be published outside of the physical CE copies? It's not that I dislike using iTunes, I just would much rather have the disk in MP3 format so I can listen to it at my leisure without having to have iTunes open in order to do so.

I can't make any promises but I'll inquire with our Licensing team about the option to purchase a CD copy. As for not having to use iTunes, this may be of some help: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2239

There's also a link in that article to information about how to convert files to other formats. Hope this helps!